Edison (Calif.) High wing Bonnie Samuelson, who received a scholarship offer after an unofficial visit to UConn, has committed to Stanford according to a report on the ocvarsity.com blog.

The 6-foot-2 Samuelson averaged 27 points, 9 rebounds and 4.4 steals as a junior at Edison.

These are hectic times in Geno Auriemma's life.

Fresh off guiding UConn to its second straight undefeated season and seventh national title, Auriemma only had a couple of days to unwind before preparing to run a training camp with the U.S. senior national team. The camp opened on Sunday night at Gampel Pavilion and will end with a scrimmage on April 18.

"There are a lot of things that I have to do at Connecticut between now and next October and I am lucky that our staff is going to able to help me do that and there is a lot that I have to do for USA Basketball including win a world championship," Auriemma said. "Right now my main focus between now and the start of preseason practice on Oct. 15 is to win a world championship and everything I do this summer between now and then is going to be geared towards that.

"As soon as I am done with that, just kind of turn the switch and get ready for UConn basketball again in October. I have always been pretty good about that, just kind of picking things up and putting them on the shelf and then coming back to them when I need them and go onto the next thing. The first couple of days were tough, Wednesday/Thursday were not easy after we won because of the intensity level of what happened. I feel good, I feel better now than I did Wednesday, I was shot on Wednesday."

Auriemma's next public act as UConn's head coach will come at the April 18 parade in Hartford but behind the scene he will be coordinating his staff's game plan for the NCAA evaluation period which runs from Friday-April 20.

"This coming week there is practice for the national team, the young guys - the college guys - are coming in midway through the week, I have some recruiting to do, we have the parade, the scrimmage," Auriemma said. "It's probably good that we cram all that in because my Sunday night, Monday morning I know I am done and I can really kind of step back and observe the whole thing and see where it is. I am kind of looking forward to next Monday, it will really be the first time that I don't really have anything looming except the Kentucky Derby."

Auriemma said he won't be going out on the road as associate head coach Chris Dailey and assistant coaches Marissa Moseley and Shea Ralph will be the ones making the rounds.

"I am going to miss it, it is this coming weekend. All the coaches will be gone and I'll be here," Auriemma said. "We are involved with some really good players and we have an opportunity to get further involved."

NCAA rules prohibits Auriemma from discussing individual recruits but the Huskies have received commitments from Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, a highly-decorated 6-foot wing out of Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, Calif., and Brianna Banks, a 5-foot-10 guard out of Northgate High in Newnan, Ga. UConn is expected to focus its recruiting efforts on landing a post player or two with Elizabeth Williams out of Virginia Beach, Va., Kiah Stokes of Marion, Iowa and Ally Malott out of Middletown, Ohio at the top of the list. UConn has previously offered scholarships to two other perimeter players (Delaware wing Betnijah Laney and California wing Bonnie Samuelson).

One player not on UConn's radar is Kelsey Bone. A recruiting source told me that UConn is not interested in the 6-foot-5 Texas native who recently announced she was leaving South Carolina despite being named the Southeastern Conference's Newcomer of the Year by the Associated Press. UConn pursued Bone out of Dulles High in Sugar Land, Tex. but the Huskies were not a finalist for Bone's services.

CASH DISPENSES ADVICE
Swin Cash knows a thing or two about being part of a five-member freshman class, coning into UConn in 1998 along with Sue Bird, Asjha Jones, Tamika Williams and Keirsten Walters so I asked her if she had any advice for UConn's five-member incoming freshman class.

"Don't name themselves," Cash said with a laugh as she recalled how her class named themselves the TASSK Force. "Have a lot of energy. You are going to make a heck a lot of mistakes but if you go hard, going hard will win you a heck of a lot more games than you think. That is my advice.

"I remember asking Coach (Auriemma) 'why am I starting (as a freshman)?' I came in and Tamika (Williams) was the No. 1 ranked (high school) player in the country, we had Asjha (Jones), Stacy (Hansmeyer), Paige (Sauer) and I am just a skinny little kid and nobody from my neighborhood thought I'd be playing a lot of minutes let alone starting on the team. I think it was the high level he expected us to play, the energy we needed out there."

NO SURGERY FOR APPEL
Former Stanford star Jayne Appel was at the training camp but her injured ankle and foot will keep her from taking part. Appel said she is probably a couple of weeks away from being able to get back on the court but no surgery will be needed. She is not rushing back to be ready in time for the start of training camp with the WNBA's San Antonio Silver Stars on April 26, determined not to be back until she is 100 percent so she doesn't reaggravate her injuries.

There will be more from my interview with Appel in the next day or two.

I spend a lot of time on the "who" part of recruiting, updating the results of kids coming to UConn and do what I can to stay on top of the players the UConn staff is interested in. But I thought it would be a good time to trying to answer the "why" part of recruiting.

Every year I get the e-mails. Why aren't they looking at players A, B and C, they are rated higher than the ones UConn is currently recruiting. My answer is always the same, the only recruiting service I concern myself with is the one run by Geno Auriemma and Chris Dailey.

After Sunday's win over Georgetown, Auriemma addressed the subject of what he looks for when he is in attendance at a high school game. I think the quotes give a pretty good indication that character is more important to Auriemma than characters.

"I just watched a couple of high school games in the last couple weeks," Auriemma said. "So I go around the country and I watch the games. Player A doesn't talk to any of her teammates, they don't talk to her. They win and they win big but you could tell this kid does not have a great relationship with her teammates. Then you watch Team B and this kid is the best player and every kid on their team is like (celebrating with them) and they are interacting so you make a little bit of a rash judgment 'that kid there is unselfish, wants to win and all her teammates like her even though she is a first-team All-American. That kid right there, that kid doesn't get along with her teammates for whatever reason.'

"Once talent is equal, you try to look for those kinds of things that may separate one kid from another. Sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong. fortunately for us, we have been right more times than we have been wrong. We've been wrong a couple of times."

Please save your time and don't e-mail me asking who he was talking about. I don't get my kicks piling on 16 and 17 year old kids. The fact is that Auriemma and his staff like Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (who has already committed), Betnijah Laney, Kiah Stokes and Bonnie Samuelson because they have all been offered scholarships but as far as whose attitude turns Geno or his coaches off, you'll need to find another place to get that sort of info.

ALL-STAR GAME TOMORROW
Former UConn star Diana Taurasi will be starting for the Rest of the World squad in Tuesday's EuroLeague All-Star Game at Gdynia, Poland while Connecticut Sun teammates Sandrine Gruda and Anete Jekabsone-Zogota will play for Europe. The game will tip at 7 p.m. in Gdynia which, if my math is correct, is 1 p.m. in Connecticut.

Tickets are going fast for the Feb. 27 game against Georgetown at the XL Center. UConn officials announced earlier today that fewer than 1,000 seats are left for the Feb. 27 game.

Before the game seniors Tina Charles, Kalana Greene, Kaili McLaren, Meghan Gardler and Jacquie Fernandes will be honored as it will be their last home game. After the game the Huskies should be celebrating the Big East regular season title unless the Huskies slip up between now and then.

There are plenty of tickets remaining for Saturday's game against Providence, also at the XL Center.

The date when the Reality TV UConn women's basketball style will be introduced has been pushed back from tomorrow to Feb. 26. That's the date when results of the first batch of videos shot by Fernandes and McLaren will be aired on ESPNU. The times have not changed as the episodes are set to air at 3:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.

Now for a few other notes, UConn incoming freshman Samarie Walker had 10 points as her Chaminade Julienne of Dayton, Ohio team opened with a 73-25 win over Stivers in the Ohio Division II Springboro Regional. Chaminade Julienne plays Monroe on Saturday. I find the Ohio playoff system a bit bizarre as Chaminade Julienne is the No. 2 seed but has to play a game before meeting the No. 10 seed.

There's a nice piece on the relationship between Bonnie Samuelson, who has been offered a scholarship by UConn, and her younger sister Karlie, who accompanied Bonnie on her unofficial visit to UConn earlier this season, by the Huntington Beach (Calif.) Independent.

In the time to give credit where credit is due, former UConn commit Elena Delle Donne had the top single-game scoring performance in Division I women's basketball this season when she dropped 54 on James Madison Thursday night. Perhaps most impressive is that Delle Donne scored 54 points on 28 shots and was 7 for 8 from 3-point range. However, Delaware lost 88-83 in overtime to James Madison as Delle Donne's teammates were just 11 of 26 from the floor with 17 turnovers. James Madison's Dawn Evans had 38 points despite missing 20 of her 29 shots. Brittany Carter of Memphis had the previous high with 49 points in a 98-83 win over Sacramento State on Nov. 27, 2009.

The California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section brackets were announced today and UConn commits Lauren Engeln and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis could be squaring off in the Class 2A semifinals next weekend.

Mosqueda-Lewis' Mater Dei squad is the top seed and will receive a first-round bye. Engeln's Laguna Hill's team drew the fourth seed and will host Rowland on Thursday.

If Mater Dei wins twice and Laguna Hills takes three games the teams would meet in the semifinals on Feb. 27.

Mosqueda-Lewis, a 6-foot junior guard, is averaging 23 points a game for Mater Dei while Engeln, a 5-foot-11 guard, is averaging 19.4 points, 10.7 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 2.5 steals per game.

UConn recruiting target Bonnie Samuelson, who is averaging 27 points, 9 rebounds and 4.5 steals per game, led her Edison squad to the No. 3 seed in Class 2AA.

On a day when senior center Tina Charles found out she was the first UConn player to be named the Big East Player of the Week in consecutive weeks since Diana Taurasi in January of 2003, the subject went a little deeper than any individual accolades.

Charles spoke not only of her two-credit internship at the Bergin Correctional Institute which will begin later this month but of an emotional trip to the Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford on Monday morning.

Charles admitted that if she wasn't in position for a career as a professional basketball player wasn't in her future, she would like to be a probation officer. The internship will give her a chance to see if that is something up her alley.

"I am definitely looking forward to (following around) the parole officer, shadowing him and (see) what prisoners go through," Charles said. "I did orientation (at the facility). It was different, it was surprising because a lot of them knew who I was and they wanted to have extra protection with me because it is open, it is not restricted. A lot of them were saying hi to me and things like that."

This morning from about 9-11:30 a.m., Charles and her teammates visited patients at the hospital which is something that always tugs are her heartstrings because some of the patients are struggling for their lives.

"It shows that we are blessed, being healthy and being able to play this sport and not to take anything for granted," Charles said. "Just the children seeing our faces and the young adults, it just made their day. We brought them our game day posters and they were really interacting with us and it really made the families happy.

"It is really difficult, I am the most emotional person on the team, we watch a movie and I start crying so I had tears in my eyes just giving out toys around Christmas time (during the team's visit to a local Salvation Army) but it's hard but just the fact that we are able to put a smile on somebody's face by signing an autograph or anything little by that ...

BUCK IFFY
UConn redshirt freshman Heather Buck missed practice because of the sprained left ankle she suffered in Saturday's win over North Carolina and her status for Wednesday's game against Marquette is up in the air.

"She didn't practice (Monday) and not sure she is going to practice tomorrow," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "We'll see. If she doesn't do either, she'll be limited for Wednesday. It is nothing serious, it is just a sprained ankle."

NO OFFER FOR MASSENGALE, YET
A recruiting source said that UConn did not offer a scholarship offer to highly-touted Bolingbrook (Ill.) High junior guard Ariel Massengale, who was in attendance at Saturday's UConn/North Carolina game.

The source said nothing is imminent with Massengale, who figures to take her time during the process although it figures to be yet another recruiting battle between UConn and Tennessee for Massengale's services.

UConn has offered scholarships to juniors Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (the only member of the current high school junior class to commit to the Huskies), Bentijah Laney and Bonnie Samuelson.